A Morcar/Zargon/Evil Wizard Player deck is a great way to motivate the Heroes not to over-exploit the unlimited time available to them in a Quest. For those M/Z players who want that leverage but don't want to invest the time, trouble, and money needed to create a deck, I've worked up a simplified alternative that uses Monster Cards instead.

Start by placing the Monster Cards as a face-down deck behind the Information Screen. If there aren't any monsters on the gameboard at the start of M/Z's turn, draw a card. If the Monster Card matches the Wandering Monster for the Quest, place the matching figure on the gameboard just out of view of the Heroes, either immediately or on the first possible M/Z turn. This patrolling Wandering Monster may move/attack as normal.

If the drawn card isn't the Wandering Monster but matches the Wandering Monster figure color-type (green, white, gray, etc.), place a Wandering Monster figure next to the Monster Card deck. If the Wandering Monster card is later drawn, any figures by the Monster Card deck are also placed and moved as part of the Wandering Monster patrol.

A Monster Card is discarded after drawing it, but shuffle all the Monster Cards together after the Wandering Monster is drawn.

I like your idea! Especially if used with other custom rules where the heroes can spent turn without moving to recover spells or mind points, this will add some suspance to the quest.Oh, and I'd like to introduce a wandering chaos sorcerer in a custom quest... but better if he is not alone, so your rule about collecting minis next to the deck until a wandering monster card is drawn will be very useful.

I once started to make a more detailed treasure deck - actually four different decks for searching empty rooms, searching rooms with furniture, searching tombs and looting dead figures. One thing I included was an amount of wandering monster patrol cards (a minor percentage of all wandering monster cards) which would produce 1D3 wandering monsters (the amount was differed in the four decks - for example, searching in.a funitured room had better treasures, but also greater dangers (assumingthe search takes more time and focus).

Care has to be taken when introducing new monster cards, that this deck won't become too diluted. But hey we are free to modify the drawing rule as well as the card stack size, so this ain't too much of a concern.

I remember for the EWP deck I had to test several times until I got the pressure right. Now that it works I wouldn't want to miss it.

knightkrawler wrote:...that does not have any real uses otherwise. I like it, too.

Ahaa... You've never played my Higher lower game at the Inn. A bit of pre quest gambling. The top card is revealed, you pick a stat and say higher or lower, if you're right you move on to the next card.

I also use the deck to pick a random Monster when i play the AHQ wondering monster token. The card stays out til it's killed and this monster only has 1bp unlike the upgraded to US stats of the normal monsters.

It is a great idea! I never used the monster cards before.I know the rules state that you are supposed to have them handy for the players to look at, but I don't like the Heroes to have all the information right in front of them; it seems like cheating if novice heroes know everything right off the bat.

This wandering monster deck idea is a good use of the cards, and helps prevent heroes from always lining up at the door and slaughtering everything before it can move. Now the monsters will be able to do the same thing to the heroes on occasion.